When you start any job–whether it’s your first job flipping burgers after school or your ultimate career fantasy—one question looms above the rest: How will I get paid?
No matter how awesome any job is, the bottom line is, well, the bottom line! You want to know you’ll be paid (and hopefully paid well!) according to how hard you work.
At Traveling Vineyard, we get it! In fact, financial reward is one of the five Fs that are pillars of our company. With that in mind, here’s a look at how you will get paid as a Wine Guide.
The Traveling Vineyard Compensation Plan: YOUR Career Plan
Transparency is huge for us—at Traveling Vineyard we reward our Wine Guides for growing and running their businesses, and we don’t hide how we do it! There are many ways to get paid—from submitting personal volume from tasting events, to shopping cart orders, and more. Our Career Plan also rewards you for adding new team members and helping them grow their businesses!
Here’s a breakdown of how each method of compensation works:
Submitting Personal Volume From Tasting Events
At every wine tasting event, you’ll market wine and earn Personal Volume based on the orders submitted by hosts and guests. Then, we pay you what we call “marketing fees”—or, commission. The more volume you submit, the more you earn in marketing fees! Tasting Events are the best way to keep your business running and see marketing fees right away!
Shopping Cart Orders & Other Types of Orders
In addition to earning marketing fees via wine tasting events, Wine Guides also have the opportunity to make income through our online shopping cart orders. This outward-facing website has shopping cart functionality—you can send out the link, and anyone with the link can order directly from your online shopping cart. This option is incredibly popular when paired with social media websites (although nothing beats an in-person wine tasting with friends!).
Traveling Vineyard also offers a subscription service called REWINED so your customers get amazing wines every other month, and you make marketing fees in your sleep!
Adding New Team Members & Helping Them Grow Their Businesses
Perhaps the best way to really boost your income potential with the Traveling Vineyard compensation plan is to build a team. It’s pretty simple to do: A Wine Guide helps someone else kick off a Wine Tasting business, and when both the Wine Guide and their team member are “qualified”— when they market $250 in volume in the same month—the Wine Guide is promoted to a One Star Leader. Traveling Vineyard rewards that leader with compensation on their own volume, and on the volume of their team member.
There are 14 levels of our Career Plan; each is based on building active, strong teams. The best part is that when your team members succeed, get paid, and grow teams of their own, we reward you not only for your personal volume, but for managing and motivating them as part of a successful team!
Our Favorite Question: “How much will I get paid?”
We really love answering the question “How much do I get paid?” because our Wine Guides know that their compensation is really up to them! Wine Guides are paid a personal marketing fee of 15% on personal volume submitted during a calendar month. What’s really important and impactful is the Personal Bonus. As a Wine Guide submits more volume, they’re eligible for a Personal Bonus of 5-20%, which means that their total monthly compensation could be up to 35%!
How often do Wine Guides get paid?
Wine Guides are paid on their personal volume three times each month. If you have a team, we calculate your team bonuses at the end of the month, and you’ll be paid team bonuses with your last paycheck of the month. We make deposits to our Wine Guides three times each month, because we know you want to see rewards from your hard work right away.
Are there any instances when a Wine Guide will not get paid?
Wine Guides aren’t paid on their own personal orders (the wine they buy for their own use); however, they do receive a 20% discount—and the volume from personal orders can help move a Wine Guide into a different Personal Bonus category!
Paid Twice, So Nice: Thrive Rewards
The Career Plan isn’t the only way that we reward our Wine Guides! We know that our Wine Guides work hard to earn income that is probably spoken for by the time it hits their bank accounts—from making extra money to take that family vacation, to saving for Christmas presents, to paying off debt. That’s why we have a unique program called Thrive.
We want to reward our Wine Guides for their everyday business building activities above and beyond the Traveling Vineyard compensation plan.
We do so by issuing badges for submitting personal volume, growing your team, promotion, and a variety of other activities. These badges earn you coins, which you can then redeem for some pretty awesome stuff:
- Business building items like wine, accessories, logowear (so you can be a walking, talking billboard!)
- Our LUXX Getaway incentive trip
- Cruises
- A whole marketplace of items—from Michael Kors to KitchenAid, iPads to wine refrigerators to bicycles—you name it, you can redeem your coins for additional reward items!
Thrive is one of the ways we show our appreciation for our Wine Guides—even though most of their paycheck is going directly to their “why,” they still get something special that is just for them!
“I love our Thrive program! I’ve been gone for the past month and came home to lots of goodies—my new Kate Spade, my super cool Traveling Vineyard shirt, and lots and lots of wine!” #paidtwicesonice – Erin Beauvais Gartland
Connecticut Wine Guides Lisa Sullivan and Shana Jones are “partners in wine.”
FAQs About The Traveling Vineyard Compensation Plan
- How should Wine Guides handle their taxes? Wine Guides are independent contractors, so they will receive a 1099 form from Traveling Vineyard if they earn over $600 in a calendar year. We highly suggest that a Wine Guide reach out to a tax professional who can help them accurately pay any taxes owed and make the most of business-related itemized deductions.
- Will anything be taken out of my paychecks? How much? There’s only one deduction—when your host earns complimentary bottles through our Host Rewards program, you’ll make a contribution toward those bottles. There will be a $2 contribution per event, so even if your host earns the maximum rewards (which is sometimes up to 6 bottles) your total contribution will be $2. Other than that, your paycheck will be the total amount you see in your Marketing Fees. You get to see that amount in real time in your tasting room (your digital “back office” where you can track everything that’s going on with your Traveling Vineyard business).
- How can I trust that I’ll actually get paid? We are a proud member of the Direct Selling Association (DSA) and abide by their code of ethics. We’re also accredited by the BBB, and most importantly, we have thousands of Wine Guides who are just like you! They would be happy to talk with you about how they started and run their businesses, and share with you how the Traveling Vineyard Compensation Plan worked for them.
- Who can I talk to if I have questions? Contact your Wine Guide—you’re also more than welcome to contact our Cheerleaders (our support team), who will be happy to answer any questions you have.